You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again

by Heather McDonald

  3 I’ll Never Geriatric Date in This Town Again

  It was April and we were so excited to go to Trader Vic’s, the bar inside of the Beverly Hilton on the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. I wore a black romper one-piece—a sure-fire show-stopping outfit, especially at $108 to be precise—with a halter that showed plenty of cleavage and shorts that displayed full leg. It was a total Heather delight !

  I walked confidently into the bar with my two Gamma Phi Beta sorority sisters, Tara and Stacey. Now that we were officially twenty-one, that initial thrill of flashing fake IDs and getting past the doorman was a thing of the past. We headed straight for the bar, where we ordered these huge tropical drinks that had like six different kinds of booze in them and were garnished with white gardenias. The huge bowls of flowery booze had to be held with two hands and cost about twenty-one dollars. But when you had your dad’s credit card to slap down, it was an easy buy!

  Now, after one of these concoctions, you’re guaranteed to develop the confidence, of, like, a supermodel, say, in Minnesota. How could I not have confidence? My hair was in what I like to call an original pouf. I pulled the top of my hair into a barrette so that it pouffed up and outward, while the length of my hair was curled via action-packed hot rollers. It just touched my nipples.

  I have always loved big hair. I thought I had a fat face and the big hair helped balance it all out perfectly until I received a comment from my own usually extremely nice sister Shannon. I had landed the part of Claire in The Nutcracker and Shannon was a little pissed because she was a junior and I was just a freshman. Usually freshmen were members of the chorus, but the drama teacher chose me for the highly desired lead. Shannon quipped, “You only got the part because Claire is supposed to be a young girl and you have ...” Then she puffed out her cheeks and smugly pointed at them.

  Seriously, I did have the fattest face in town. At fourteen, if someone were to see me driving and just see my head, they would have thought I weighed 200 pounds. In reality, I had stick-thin legs and tiny ankles. Once a boy at my brother’s school told me that when he watched me cheerlead for the junior varsity basketball team, he used to wonder how those scrawny legs could hold up the rest of my body.

  Quite honestly, I was not attractive at that age, but I had no idea of my reality because my mother always told me how beautiful I was. She would look at me and say, “Oh those cheekbones!” And, referring to my unkempt, bushy eyebrows, she said, “You look just like Brooke Shields!”

  Strange, with all that positive attention, I never could understand why no boys ever asked me out. It was perplexing.

  Fortunately, at twenty-one, tweezers and the universe had equalized my features and I looked pretty darn cute. At Trader Vic’s, I noticed him standing far across the room. His name was Fred Basford. Fred had a full head of hair and a nice tanned face. He smiled at me and I knew then that he was older—late thirties maybe? Well, at least that’s what I convinced myself he was. I was always up for something exciting and new.

  Fred Basford was tall, probably about six-three. I’m five-nine, so finding someone tall was always a priority. That’s not to say I hadn’t dated a number of shorter guys through the years—I considered myself an equal opportunity dater—but I have to admit it’s kind of a bummer being with someone who you can’t look up to. It’s no fun constantly having to slouch and develop self-inflicted scoliosis. It’s simply no fun trying to figure out what outfits work with a lower heel. Flats are not always “in” and were certainly not during the mid- to late nineties. With a really tall guy, you always feel petite and a little vulnerable.

  I feel the same way about a guy’s weight. Yes, I love a smooth six-pack, but he has to be buff, too. So a little bit of thickness while still athletic is the best combo to me, though I doubt there are many men who desire female bodies that include unusually small bone density and stomach cellulite.

  There I was, twenty-one, my USC college graduation six weeks away, and I was out at what I considered a hot spot with my cute sorority sisters, talking to Fred, this older, sophisticated guy.

  It’s hard going to bars in your early twenties because you can never afford to eat at the restaurant. By ten o’clock, you look around the tables with their yummy appetizers of shrimp, dipping sauces, maybe a little ahi tuna, and you realize what it must be like to live in Africa. What I wouldn’t do to just dive into a pile of those leftover shrimp or chicken skewers.

  That’s what is great about having a decent job in your thirties: you can actually sit down and order something at these places. But the irony is that by the time you hit your mid-thirties, you don’t care about going to the hottest spot anymore.

  By now, the gardenia-flowered, multiliquor drink had flowed into my system and I had had no food except for what I ate at my sorority salad bar at about five that afternoon. As my stomach grumbled, Fred asked me what my name was and what I did for a living. When I told him I was a senior at USC, he got all excited. He had gone to USC, too. He was a Beta, a top fraternity made up mostly of hot surfers from Newport Beach.

  Eventually, Fred asked me about tennis. Of course, I lied and said I played all the time and was even on the team in high school, young Martina that I was. The truth was my mom gave my sister and me lessons the summer between third and fourth grades, and it was hardly as if we were Vanessa and Serena Williams whipping our white-beaded braids around. I pretty much sucked at every sport, including tennis. Athletics has never been one of my natural gifts. The only thing I ever enjoyed about phys ed class was being picked last with my gay friend Gary.

  Yes, even in the second grade I had gaydar and was a full-blown fag hag. Gary and I were always banished to the outfield during baseball. We sang songs from Annie and Grease, talked about the latest fashion trends, and agonized over what we were going to wear on free dress day, the one day a month we didn’t have to wear uniforms. Just as Gary described the Lacoste shirt he was going to wear, a baseball rolled between us and we didn’t even notice it. That is until all the other kids started screaming at us.

  Gary didn’t know he was gay, but I did and I was his biggest champion. I should have been waving the pride flag for Gary even though I was only in grade school. One afternoon in the fifth grade, my friend told me that Gary had kissed Noni, a public school girl who had just transferred in, behind the janitor’s shed. I was disgusted. “This is not right,” I screamed. “This is not natural. God did not intend for Gary to kiss girls. Gary is gay!” Gary finally came out after high school, where he was the lead in every musical.

  There was no filter when it came to TV and life in general inside the reaches of my home. Because my parents were residential realtors, they unintentionally taught me many stereotypes, both positive and negative. For example, Jewish neighborhoods had the best schools; Persians will try to negotiate even after the deal is done; and gay men make excellent, loyal clients who love to flip houses.

  At the end of the night, Fred and I exchanged numbers with a promise that I would play tennis with him at his home. Yes, his home included a real north-by-south legal tennis court—cha-ching—in Pacific Palisades. This was exciting. Who knew if he would call, but if he did, I was going.

  This was way more interesting than going to the 9-0, a bar at the end of fraternity row. I had been going to 9-0 for the last four years with my fake ID. I’d gone a hundred times, and at least ten of those times involved going back the next afternoon to pick up my credit card that I left behind only to be hit with the distinct stench of stale beer in daylight. The only thing more depressing than that is when you start drinking too early in the day, pass out, and wake up the next morning only to realize you missed your own birthday party. You only turn twenty-three and twenty-six once, you know.

  I met Fred on a Saturday night, and by Tuesday, I had not thought much more about him. When I returned to my room in my sorority house after classes that afternoon, I checked my answering machine and sure enough heard his mature voice: “Hi, Heather. This is Fred
Basford. I met you at Trader Vic’s on Saturday night. Give me a call at my office at 310 …”

  The book The Rules, a bestseller about strict rules to follow in order to get a guy to fall in love with you, had not come out yet. One of the main rules, I later learned, is never call a guy first and take your time calling him back. This way you always seem busy and appear to have your own life. I wish the book had come out earlier; it would have saved me a lot of heartache and embarrassment. Without this knowledge, I immediately dialed his office. After getting through the main receptionist to his private secretary and eventually to him, I knew he was quite the powerful businessman, like Victor Newman of Newman Enterprises on The Young and the Restless.

  Fred asked me if I didn’t mind driving to his place and we would go to dinner from there.

  “Of course, I don’t mind,” I replied just a little too eagerly. The Rules say to have him pick you up at your place. But was I really supposed to have this older man pick me up at the Gamma Phi Beta house and have our senile housemother, aka “The Phantom,” mistake him for someone’s father?

  We called our housemother “The Phantom” because she was small and skinny and had broken a hip. Therefore, she could not get up past the first floor. But all of a sudden, she’d just show up around a corner out of nowhere like a ghost. Her broken hip was a major bonus for all the girls because we had strict rules while living in the house, which included no boys and no booze upstairs. Since she couldn’t get up there, we always “pre-partied” before our exchanges and formals, and guys found their way up via the fire escape.

  Fred gave me directions to his home and told me to get there at six that Friday night.

  Now the crucial stuff came into play. What the hell was I going to wear on my date? I wanted to look good but classy. Cowboy boots were for sure.

  I went to my friend Nicole’s room to see what she could lend me. My sorority sisters and I frequently borrowed one another’s clothes. Sometimes I’d get into trouble because I would take things like earrings or a scrunchie hair band without asking. Roommates found their belongings over on my messy side of the room and got pissed off. But it wasn’t like I was a kleptomaniac. I just grew up with sisters, and there was an unspoken understanding that it was cool to do this. But with some of my sorority sisters, it was not the least bit OK. In fact, it resulted in a long, uncomfortable handwritten letter taped to our sorority refrigerator stating: “HEATHER MCDONALD, PLEASE READ!”

  But this time I asked Nicole’s permission. Besides, Nicole had the best clothes and style sense. She was our very own Donna Martin from 90210. Her dad directed many hit sitcoms and her family actually lived in Beverly Hills. Their mansion was just off Sunset Boulevard and had its own movie theater with a real popcorn maker. She went to my high school in the Valley, but during her junior year her parents moved “over the hill” to a gorgeous house on Roxbury Drive.

  This was all so exotic to me. I was forbidden from driving “over the hill” in high school. Anything farther than Universal Studios was completely off limits.

  I inadvertently broke this rule one summer night when I was fourteen, and I suffered the consequences. My friend Heather—yes, I had a friend named Heather. We were in fact “The Heathers” and our public-school friend Gretchen used to tell our parents we were going to the movies but instead we would walk up and down Ventura Boulevard. On one of these evenings we found ourselves enjoying catcalls from passing vehicles, eating frozen yogurt testers, and reading magazines from the newsstands until a man yelled at us to buy or leave. We then headed back to the theater, where my sister Shannon was to pick us up and take us home.

  As we waited a big black stretch limo pulled up and rolled down its back window and who should pop his head out but Jason Bateman! Yes, the Jason Bateman. The brown-haired, much cuter, much funnier friend of Ricky Schroder in Silver Spoons. Jason Bateman was so my type. Though Ricky Schroder was the star of Silver Spoons and Jason just the sidekick, I preferred Jason; besides, I’ve never been into blonds. Jason and his nonfamous friends invited us into his limo, so we got in, and since there wasn’t enough room for all of us to sit, guess who got to sit on Jason’s lap? That’s right, me, the virgin.

  Jason and I hit it off. We all tried to act cool about the whole Silver Spoons fame. Also, Jason was a lot older than us, he was seventeen, so we didn’t want to appear immature. As we were laughing I noticed my sister’s car pull up behind us. We decided to tell my sister the truth but that we were going to all sleep at my friend Heather’s house so we could spend time hanging out with Jason and the limo friends. I hopped off Jason’s lap and talked to my sister, and when I returned, who’s now sitting on the Silvers Spoons’ second lead’s lap but my other friend, Greedy Gretchen. Bitch.

  Our first stop was a diner about ten minutes down the boulevard in Sherman Oaks called Du-par’s. There Heather called her mom and told her we were just getting something to eat with my sister Shannon and then Shannon would drive us home. When Heather and I returned to the booth, there was Gretchen all over Jason, feeding him french fries, and laughing. I was so pissed. She was completely hogging the conversation. I wanted to ask Jason about his sister Justine, who was on Family Ties. Did he know the cast and were they concerned that Tina Yothers was no longer cute and that’s why they added a baby? I had lots of questions and thanks to Gretchen I had no opportunity to ask them.

  When we got back into the limo, I thought we’d start heading back toward the West Valley where we lived but instead we got on the freeway and merged onto the 405! Oh my God, what is happening? I thought. My dad had a strict rule that Shannon and I could not go “over the hill”—nothing east of Sherman Oaks. My dad believed our older sister Kathi’s wild behavior was a direct result of her going “over the hill” and hanging out with “The Holly Crowd,” as he would refer to it. Holly was short for Hollywood and he didn’t want Shannon or me ever to be on a first-name basis with the bouncer at the Rainbow on Sunset Boulevard.

  “Where are we going?” I questioned, trying to sound cool.

  “We’re going back to the hotel?” Jason answered nonchalantly.

  “What hotel?” I asked, now concerned.

  “The Beverly Hills Hotel, that’s where we’re staying?” Said one of his friends who had a Southern accent. I had no idea his friend was Southern. I’d barely paid any attention to anyone other than Jason and Gretchen.

  Next thing I knew we were in a hotel room in the Beverly Hills Hotel watching Risky Business. Well, I had seen Risky Business at that point about twelve times and Tom Cruise hadn’t even done his gay dance in his briefs and Ray-Ban sunglasses yet so I knew there was more than an hour and fifteen minutes left. Heather and I started to freak out it, as it was already one a.m., but we couldn’t call her mom or my parents and say, “We lied. We are at the Beverly Hills Hotel and it’s a simply stunning room with palm trees wallpaper and Gretchen is off with Jason Bateman.” My stomach started to get the pit feeling, which I still get today when I know I’m going to get in trouble. We started to get more and more stressed when the Southern guy said, “This is ridiculous, you girls need to get home, let’s have the limo take them back.”

  In this case a Southern guy proved to be a gentleman. So Heather and I decided to walk around the hotel, hoping to find Gretchen so we could all leave. After looking for about ten minutes, Heather turned to me and said, “Let’s leave her. She’ll find her way back, she went to public school.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, thinking What would Jesus do? Would Jesus leave his apostle at the Beverly Hills Hotel, if it meant pissing off his mother, Mary? Yes, I believe he would leave his apostle at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  “Yes, we need to get back. You know that our parents have already talked to each other and already figured out our lies. Our parents don’t even know Gretchen’s parents’ number to call them, so she’s got nothing to lose,” she argued.

  “All right, let’s get out of here,” I said.

  The whole ride home I
just kept imagining my dad’s burgundy Trans Am in Heather’s driveway, and the thought was making me sick. The guys dropped us off and as we walked into Heather’s living room, Heather’s mom went running to the window to see who had dropped us off. Before we could explain the truth, all my nerves and fears of getting in trouble got to me and I ran to the bathroom and threw up a little, giving Heather’s mom the suspicion that we’d been drinking, which we hadn’t. We told her the truth and said that Gretchen personally knew them from public school and that they were taking her home. We both ended up getting grounded for two weeks, along with my poor sister for lying for us. However, my mom the star fucker she can be, was really impressed with the whole Jason Bateman aspect of the story. She even had the nerve to ask if he got my number and talked about what a coup it would be if I could take him to a high school dance. Imagine the pictures we could send to all of Bob’s relatives back East!

  I loved that Nicole lived “over the hill,” and she agreed to lend me a very non-Valley outfit.

  Nicole gave me a flattering black skirt, just above the knee, way longer than what I was comfortable with, a black tank top, and a very cool fitted cranberry blazer. This was “in” at the time and apparently so was dressing like a corporate slut. Remember Ally McBeal and Heather Locklear’s short skirts on Melrose Place (the first time around)?

  We all agreed that this was the perfect look for a twenty-one-year-old college senior to go to dinner with a thirty-eight-year-old (or, so I told myself) real estate mogul.